Discussions

con:cern is a workflow engine based on an extended case handling approach. A process is described as a set of activities with pre- and postconditions. An activity is executed when its preconditions are met. It manipulates the process item, thereby creating postconditions. The process flow is determined at run-time. This approach is superior to the conventional process flow approach, if at least one of the following statements applies:

complex process with exceptions and special cases

execution sequence is dependent on multiple factors

possibility of manual intervention of process flow

content-based dependence amongst activities

strong requirements to modularity

strong requirements to flexibility

loose process coupling

Interestingly, processes often turn out to be more complex than initially anticipated. con:cern's flexibility allows to restrict yourself to implementing the normal process flow. Special cases and exceptions can be manually dealt with at run-time, or can be gradually retrofitted.

It's not the UI modeler, that has been enhanced but the process modeler. Actually con:cern comes without a UI framework. Instead it integrates with what ever UI framework you use, i.e. JSP, JSF, wingS.

Looks intersting. I would like to see a comparison between some of the open source workflow and process modelling frameworks out there. I would like to integrate one of them into a project I'm working on, but I haven't had time to evaluate the competing frameworks in depth yet.

the main difference between con:cern and competitors is, that con:cern is the only one, that uses the (IMO superior) case-handling approach.

other important characteristics of con:cern are:

o con:cern does not persist any business information. instead, it integrates with hibernate, jdo, plain jdbc, ldap, whatever you likeo con:cern comes without a UI framework. instead you are free to use JSP, JSF, wingS, Swing, whatever fits your requirementso con:cern doesn't care about management of users, groups and permissions as well

I already worked with con:cern on a prototype for an E-Procurement application we are currently developing. Prior to that I evaluted OpenSymphony's OSWorkflowtool. We have chosen to go with con:cern because it offers much more flexibility because if its case-handling approach, has a much more mature process modeler and integrates nicely into any environment even without a full blown J2EE container (we use Spring/Hibernate).

We have chosen to go with con:cern because it offers much more flexibility because if its case-handling approach, has a much more mature process modeler and integrates nicely into any environment even without a full blown J2EE container (we use Spring/Hibernate).Regards,Juergen

The doco on the website says that "all components like the Controller / Activites / Conditions / etc are stateless SessionBeans" but the prior post implies that we don't need a full-blown j2ee container (specifically, ejb) to run con:cern. The question is: we're using Spring+Struts and we would like to use con:cern, can we do so without an ejb container?

Just to verify my statement above. There is an "embedded" version of the con:cern kernel available which can run without a J2EE environment available.Holger, you can answer this question more precisely ;)

at the moment, only the j2ee runtime has been released and the light weight runtime is in a technology-preview state.

the documentation applies to the j2ee runtime only: it relies on the infrastructure, provided by a j2ee container. the controller is a sessionbean and the activities and conditions are sessionbeans. the idea was to have an implementation that depends on nothing but a J2EE server.

However, I'm planning to release the light-weight kernel in a few weeks. You can stay informed, if you join the mailing lists.

Hi,I already worked with con:cern on a prototype for an E-Procurement application we are currently developing. Prior to that I evaluted OpenSymphony's OSWorkflowtool. We have chosen to go with con:cern because it offers much more flexibility because if its case-handling approach, has a much more mature process modeler and integrates nicely into any environment even without a full blown J2EE container (we use Spring/Hibernate).Regards,Juergen

Why not sharing the integration code and some examples with the eager spring community? ;)

TechTarget provides technology professionals with the information they need to perform their jobs - from developing strategy, to making cost-effective purchase decisions and managing their organizations technology projects - with its network of technology-specific websites, events and online magazines.